235:, the radioactive strontium isotope is absorbed from water and dairy products into the bones and teeth of children, as their growing bodies need calcium. Visiting local schools and organizations, Louise Reiss convinced parents to have their children send in their lost baby teeth, in return for which they were sent a button reading "I gave my tooth to science". The team sent collection forms to area schools, and teeth were initially sent to the Reiss home, where they were sorted. In all, some 320,000 teeth from children of various ages were collected before the project was ended in 1970.
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was made aware of the research results while he was negotiating a treaty with the United
Kingdom and Soviet Union to place controls on nuclear testing. His call to the Reiss home was answered by her son; the person on the other end of the phone said, "This is John Kennedy, can I talk to your mom?"
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Further analysis by the team led to the conclusion that children born in 1963 had absorbed levels of strontium-90 that were 50 times higher than those found in children born a decade earlier. Her husband, Eric Reiss, testified before the
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when it was considering ratification of the
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Later research showed that levels of strontium-90 in the cohort born in 1968, after the treaty had gone into effect, had declined by 50 percent.
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as a means of determining the effects of nuclear fallout on the human anatomy. Louise Reiss led the project from 1959 to 1961. The research focused on detecting the presence of strontium-90, a
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and others to create the
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radioactive isotope created by the more than 400 atomic tests conducted above ground before 1963. Due to its chemical similarity to
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as a child. She originally planned to study art in college, but decided to switch to science after the outbreak of World War II.
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in their teeth that were 50 times higher than those found in children born in 1950, before the advent of widespread
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She earned her medical degree at the Woman's
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409:"Missouri Women in the Health Sciences - Biographies - Louise Z. Reiss"
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In 1959, Reiss and her husband joined environmental scientist
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Women in Health
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